Our Halifax home was bourgeois and idyllic. Mum and dad bought this elegant manor house after the war and split it up to make rooms for us kids. Mine started out as a tiny cabin. When each of my four sisters left, walls were knocked down and my space expanded. Eventually it was vast and empty, which I loved.
I went to boarding school at seven, like my father. I protested for a while but soon gave up. On my second day the whooping cough broke out and all the boys were sent home again. It was good news, except there was some confusion over who was collecting me. I was left there alone, which made me mildly insecure.
Eton was a scary place for a 12-year-old. These days it’s highly academic, but back then it was more eclectic. At 16 I passed some exams, which was frankly remarkable. Then I did so poorly in my A-Levels that I was given two O-Levels as a consolation to save me from being failed.
In 1966 I went travelling. I arrived in Delhi to help a charity, but they were fed up with useless teenage public schoolboys. In Sydney I met a young Liza Minnelli, who was charismatic and beautiful. We hung out after her cabaret shows, which was as fun as you’d think. Years later I waited for her at a stage door in London and got a kiss.
I went to Japan to reach Nirvana, but that only lasted a few hours. England was bleak – I’d lost a job and cancelled a wedding – so I ran away. I’d seen this documentary about Buddhist monks and went to join them, but soon realised that life wasn’t for me. With no plans I brazenly asked to meet [Japanese designer] Shiro Kuramata and followed him around Tokyo. One day he suggested I stop mucking about and learn myself.
Any success I have is based on the efforts of my team of 23 people. It’s not false modesty – they are all more talented and articulate than me. I suppose I have some drive and charm, which pushes us forward. Though I find being the figurehead doesn’t come naturally.
There’s a mystery pedant somewhere who, every time someone calls me an architect, writes in to correct them. And they’re quite right. It’s not that I failed my Architectural Association exams, I didn’t try sitting them. Luckily everyone else in my office passed theirs.
My mother’s funeral was rather frustrating. I kept having to remind everyone we were her actual children, because so many people looked upon her with love. She was a true minimalist, uninterested in the material.
People have tried to find a better term than ‘minimalism’ to describe my aesthetic. I was given that moniker early on and won’t try to change it. I’m simply about the designing the essential, where the act of taking away or adding to the work would spoil it.
You can’t get closer to death and still live than I did in India. Travelling with a client in 2002, our distracted driver, doing 80mph, didn’t notice the two trucks coming towards us. The Land Cruiser swerved and rolled. Mark, my client, was killed. You say clichés in the aftermath: life’s too short, I’ll never fuss about the small things… But to heal I had to return to normal. Occasionally, though, I’d burst into tears.
Ageing doesn’t bother me. But, honestly, I don’t think it’s happening. I’m unaware as I look out at the world. So far I’m healthy and rarely reminded that I’m 70. It’s just my head that is substantially fuller – and people occasionally ask me how I’m finding retirement, or some other idiotic thing.
Home Farm Cooking by John and Catherine Pawson, is out in March (johnpawson.com)
